Spotify and YouTube Music have been competing incresingly fiercely in the podcasts space. No exclusive live-music concerts are emerging as another key facet of their rivalry.
Enter YouTube with its announcement of “Music Nights: a series of exclusive live concerts designed for dedicated fans”….

– Stuart Dredge, Music Ally

The US Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced the NO FAKES Act, the bipartisan bill that would create a federal right protecting Americans’ voice and visual likeness from AI-generated deepfakes.
The committee passed the bill unanimously by voice vote on Thursday (June 18), according to Deadline, which noted that “three Republican senators — Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Eric Schmitt — raised First Amendment concerns”.
Clearing the committee sends the bill toward a vote by the full Senate, after which it would still need to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by the President before becoming law.

– Murray Stassen, Music Business Worldwide

A coalition of 31 organizations representing artists, songwriters and music managers has published an open letter warning the world’s record labels and publishers to “stop the misuse” of creators’ rights in AI deals.
The letter was published on Monday (June 22) and coordinated by the European Music Managers Alliance (EMMA).
It was signed by groups including the Songwriters of North America and the US-based Music Artists Coalition, founded by Irving Azoff.

– Murray Stassen, Music Business Worldwide

Clive Davis, the hands-on hitmaker with a “golden ear” who brought Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen to the world and revitalized the careers of Carlos Santana, Rod Stewart and Aretha Franklin, died Monday. He was 94.
Through his six-decade career, the music mogul also nurtured such acts as Billy Joel, The Grateful Dead, Alicia Keys, Simon & Garfunkel, Jennifer Hudson, Barry Manilow, Pink Floyd, Earth Wind & Fire, Aerosmith, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Kenny G, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson and Patti Smith, who once said that Davis “has a weakness for the unique performer.”

– Jennifer Frederick, The Hollywood Reporter

The major music companies and BMG have asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that lets songwriters reclaim the worldwide rights to their songs under American law.
In a petition filed on June 11, the rightsholders said the decision will cause “chaos” across the music business if it is allowed to stand.
The filing asks the justices to reverse a January ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

– Mandy Dalugdug, Music Business Worldwide

the US has always, understandably, been a domestic-centric market – but it’s now at a “vibrannt international crossroads”, a new luminate report says. While two thirds of on-demand audio streams are still of US artists, and by American artists, that dominance is steadily eroding each year.
Nearly 1 in 10 on-demand US streams were Spanish, resulting in a historic 9.5% market share. And that’s not due to an enthusiastic large niche of listeners: casual monthly listenership of latin music has grown from 41% in early 2024 to 56% in Q1 2026. Korean-language streaming had a 1.1% market share.

– Joe Sparrow, Music Ally

It’s been clear for a while now that music has moved from being a thing that a small number of people make, and the rest of us listen to, to a thing that we all do stuff with in different ways. In that latter vein, Deezer has launched a “Remix Lab” feature today in France, which lets fans remix songs on the platform – with full agreement from artists and rightsholders.

– Joe Sparrow, Music Ally

YouTube has long been one of the most accessible ways for independent artists to get their music out into the world: Anyone can create an account and post content on the site with just a few clicks. But what many artists likely didn’t realize when they clicked “agree” to the platform’s terms of service is that YouTube, and its parent company Google, would later claim the agreement justifies training artificial intelligence models on their music.
Google revealed this position in a legal filing earlier this month, obtained and reported by Billboard, as part of copyright litigation brought by indie artists over the training of its AI music model Lyria 3. While Google did not say whether the artists’ music from YouTube was in the Lyria 3 training data set, it argued that this theoretically would be allowed because the YouTube terms of service grant a “broad license to use the uploaded content” as training fodder.

– Rachael Scharf, Billboard